The 2007 PortfolioConstruction Conference program again challenged delegates' thinking about how they design and build investor portfolios - and it would have been hard to pick a better time to bring together 500 of Australia's leading portfolio construction professionals...

Credit failure season is upon us. Most recently, subprime mortgages, Bridgecorp and Basis Capital have been the stars of the show. Before them, it was Westpoint. Like cockroaches, you can be sure that for every one that rears it's head, there are dozens more lurking just out of sight. The critical issue is not whether advisers avoid credit failure, but how they manage it...

It would have been hard to pick a better time to bring together 500 of Australia's leading portfolio construction professionals. Conference came hard on the heels of the 30 June deadline for post-tax super contributions of up to $1 million and then, during conference week, the US subprime meltdown shaved 6% off global equities...

Elizabeth presents her insights into the changing face of retirement globally along with new research capturing Australian advisers' experience with their Baby Boomer clients...

If you invest even a small proportion of your portfolios in non-Investment Grade fixed income securities, you will from time to time experience a default – it’s an issue of when (and how much), rather than if. This session shows you a simple method to better manage credit risk in your portfolios...

Our panel of investment specialists presents and debates their long-term forecasts for equity markets, listed property and hedge funds...

Our visiting fellow, Bob Veres, summarises the most important things he's taken from the two-day PortfolioConstruction Conference 2007 program, and the follow up he'd be doing if he was a Practitioner delegate...

David discusses his ground-breaking research into Australian's mortality, and the common misconceptions that are undermining the integrity of their portfolios...

Each year we kick off Conference with an international keynote speaker overviewing the emerging trends they're seeing in the portfolio construction arena. This year, our keynote hailed from the US, and focused on rends in the asset allocation arena...

This session examines the key assessments to consider when developing an asset allocation to unlisted property...

This session looks at the benefits of including both listed and unlisted infrastructure assets in a client’s portfolio and how to determine the best combination of these assets to achieve an optimal portfolio structure...

Allocations to alternatives and private equity in particular are steadily increasing around the world. This session focuses on the benefits of private equity investments and the value proposition offered by experienced private equity managers...

This session examines the historical importance of including dividend-paying and dividend-growing companies in global portfolios and the impact on overall returns...

This session addresses the question of TAA value add from a practical, experiential viewpoint and outlines a TAA approach and process which has delivered superior returns on a consistent basis...

This session explores the key characteristics of capital protected products to highlight the place these types of products have in most investors' portfolios....

The ability for global and Aussie markets to bounce back following prolonged periods of relatively poor returns is testimony to one of the most enduring, fundamental characteristics of bond returns – that is, bonds are naturally mean reverting assets...

This session explores the alternative investments universe – how alternative investments inter-relate with traditional markets, and their role in portfolio construction...

The meltdown of Basis Capital has highlighted the need for much greater clarity of communication from research houses – particularly when it comes to describing product risk. With the benefit of hindsight, it is fun to look back and see what the research houses were saying about the risk of the Basis Capital Yield fund before the event. We see nothing on the two pieces of information that really matter...

Many planners still use long term historical returns to estimate future market returns on the basis that, if the historical period is long enough, everything smoothes out. This is pure bunk. In order to demonstrate this as conclusively as possible, we illustrate the impact of using 20 year historical returns as forecasts for the subsequent decade across six major equity markets over the past 107 years...

In the next few weeks, the publishing industry will have given us two books that, paired together, blow the doors off of conventional market theory. Both acknowledge that if you want to study and understand the markets, instead of examining the movements of stock prices, you have to shift your attention to the people who are actually making the trades...

Near the end of each decade, a bubble seems to emerge in financial markets...